


A Writer's Freedom

by Skullszeyes



Series: Eating The Dead [16]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Catharsis, Child Neglect, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flash Fic, Fluff, For Me, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealousy, References to Depression, Sad, Self Confidence, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Writer Vanya Hargreeves, Writers, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 16:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18285791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullszeyes/pseuds/Skullszeyes
Summary: Vanya buys a typewriter.





	A Writer's Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is mainly for me. Most of my fics are actually, but this one is cathartic for what I've been feeling for some time. I'm a writer, and for a long time I've had people support that, but over the years, that support has turned out to be more of a joke, and I've been feeling inadequate. 
> 
> I love Vanya, I love that she's a writer and a violinist, but in this story, I'd like to focus on how she feels about her writing, including her family.

Once, morning’s were less than ideal. It wasn’t for her, not the sun, not the open door when her mother wakes her, not the thumps of her siblings wandering the halls as their voices echo off the walls, not even when she pushed back the blankets and rubbed at her tired eyes. Nothing belonged to her, not even the space within her tiny room. It seemed all far apart for her to compare to her siblings, to Allison who decorated her room with color, a vanity which she stares into her mirror and smiles brightly because she knows how beautiful she is, or Luther, who is vibrant and full of energy with a spotless room and combed back blonde hair.

Her other siblings are the same, all of them a strange mix of people with something she could never have. And she was left with those thoughts roaming inside her skull, and it left the room closed in on itself.

Vanya picked up a notebook and opened it to pages of secrets. They were hers and no one else’s. She kept writing, everyday, when she felt lost and alone. When even the stale rooms of the entire academy surrounded her, leaving her wanting to scream but her voice was muffled by an invisible force. She could never will it to release from her throat, and so she wrote, and more tired days past by when the silence was too unbearable, she would play the violin.

In all her life, she was forced to accept this reality that she would never be extraordinary.

She grew up with this thought, and once those walls closed in on themselves, it happened to the inside of herself. A loneliness that left her suffocating, and even the music couldn’t help her separate her thoughts, her emotions, and she needed a place to put them, to keep them safe from anyone who would take them from her.

It was all she had to hold onto.

One day, she found it in the dusty window of a pawn shop. She disregarded the comic books sitting on thin metal stands, staring at her with their bright colors burning an ugly feeling into her chest. She entered the store and bought what she seeked, what made sense to her all those years where she felt too much and too less.

In the late afternoon, Vanya fought back sleep as she set the heavy typewriter down on her round table near the window. The sunlight streamed in, warming the room and bringing her clarity.

She was the victim of her own story for too long. More so the background character with nothing more than dust filtering around her. She would not stay there, she would find her place. And this, she softly touched the typewriter, her chest swelling with pride, her cheeks warmed at her excitement.

Vanya would write. This is who she is, a writer, someone meant to create stories and bring forth a different perception. There was something she could never truly convey to others.

This was not something she couldn't avoid, she thinks of it often enough that it bleeds from her heart, and either sound or words sown those wounds into stitches. She would dab at the blood, and go back to work, to write, to play the violin, to create something extraordinary.

And this would be hers, and no one else to touch.

With a deep breath, Vanya pressed down on the keys, and once when she felt the fear and terror twining within her, a ball sitting in her gut, words her father spoke echoed inside her head. Spikes, thorns, and thin steel wires digging into her skin. All of it leaving pain and blood for her to mend on the cold bathroom floor, or her back pressed against her bed when she used to live at the academy.

No more.

Maybe the world will remember her for the words she types onto the white pages. Her thoughts finally acknowledged, her presence in the spotlight instead of in the back or off to the side. She was not the shadows they created, she was the secret they tried to hide, the lie they told themselves.

If they won’t love her, she’ll find a way to love herself.

Vanya smiled, because for once, in the afternoon inside her apartment with the sun streaming through the open window. She was free from them, and her purpose was more than their harsh ignorance.

Her life may have been broken by a man who did not love her, but she would find her strength without him.

This would be her beginning, all she had to do was write.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic isn't meant to be long. I didn't want it to be. It's my way to find catharsis in the terrible things I've been feeling of late.


End file.
